October is Breast Cancer Propaganda Month: Pinkwashing, Breast Cancer Action and Vitamin D

Thursday, October 11, 2007 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: breast cancer, pinkwashing, pink ribbons

You've already seen the headlines touting October as breast cancer awareness month. A zillion products are available in "pink" editions now, and gullible consumers snatch them up at retail outlets without knowing a single thing about where that money goes or even what percentage of their product sale is donated to cancer non-profits. (For many products, the amount donated is mere pennies, and much of the donated money goes to worthless cancer maintenance non-profits that have no interest in actually preventing cancer...)

The level of hype and propaganda in this year's breast cancer awareness month has risen to a new low. The American Cancer Society, as usual, appears to be absolutely worthless in all this, still failing to teach women the No. 1 way to prevent a whopping 77 percent of all cancers: Sunlight and vitamin D.

The ultra-wealthy ACS non-profit, with all its ties to pharmaceutical companies and mammography machine manufacturers, still refuses to openly urge women to prevent breast cancer by getting more vitamin D through nutritional supplements or sensible sunlight exposure. In fact, the organization continues to warn people away from sunlight, actually contributing to the mass vitamin D deficiency that's now rampant in western nations (including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.).

Vitamin D deficiency greatly reduces the body's ability to halt the growth of cancer tumors. That's why higher amounts of vitamin D circulating through the blood have been shown again and again to dramatically reduce the growth of cancer tumors, keeping them in check and preventing a breast cancer diagnosis. Over 75 percent of all breast and prostate cancers could be avoided through vitamin D therapy alone.

Amazingly, the American Cancer Society appears to have no interest in vitamin D. How could it be that this cancer-centric non-profit wouldn't be interested in a free therapy that could eliminate up to three-fourths of all future cancers? Shouldn't this be the No. 1 headline around the world during breast cancer awareness month? Shouldn't the ACS be screaming this fact to anyone who will listen?

But of course not. In my opinion, the American Cancer Society has no interest whatsoever in actually preventing cancer. In my view, it is only interested in promoting the screening and treatment of cancer because that's what makes money for the financial supporters of the ACS. In fact, the ACS recently restructured its own priorities to focus more on screening and treatment, and less on cancer prevention.

What's missing from the risk factors list?

Hilariously, the ACS now says there are only four major modifiable risk factors that impact your risk of breast cancer. They are:

• Weight
• Alcohol use
• Smoking
• Exercise

Where is vitamin D on the list? It remains suspiciously absent.

Strange, don't you think? The single most powerful anti-cancer nutrient known to modern science -- one that helps halt the growth of virtually all tumors in the body while reducing breast cancer risk by 77 percent -- isn't on the American Cancer Society's list! (See our article reporting this finding at http://www.newstarget.com/021892.html )

Has the ACS failed to read the research on this nutrient? Could the most miraculous anti-cancer nutrient known to modern science have somehow slipped by the astute scientists at the ACS?

Some intelligent outside observers might conclude that the ACS is either hopelessly ignorant about nutrition or that it simply has no interest in promoting anything that would financially harm its primary supporters (drug companies and oncology equipment manufacturers).

Think Before You Pink

Amid all the mindless reporting about breast cancer awareness month in the mainstream media, there is at least one blip of intelligence on the radar: The Think Before You Pink campaign by Beast Cancer Action (http://www.bcaction.org), a much better informed anti-cancer non-profit led by Barbara Brenner in San Francisco. Breast Cancer Action has a rare philosophy of refusing to accept money from pharmaceutical companies or any corporations that profit from the disease.

The American Cancer Society, on the other hand, takes all sorts of money from companies that profit from cancer. Some might argue that's why the ACS -- often called the wealthiest non-profit in the world -- seems to have no interest in actually preventing the disease, but rather focuses on "recruiting" more women into conventional cancer treatments that earn billions of dollars in profits for their primary financial supporters.

Breast Cancer Action has an important message for consumers: Think Before You Pink. It means, essentially, don't be hoodwinked into buying "pink" products unless you know exactly how much money is going to cancer research and where the money's going. A lot of the "pink products" money goes to the Susan G. Komen foundation, which in my opinion is another useless nonprofit engaged primarily in pleasing the interests of its big corporate supporters rather than actually doing anything useful to prevent cancer. Read the book Pink Ribbons, Inc. to learn more about what happens behind closed doors at the Susan G. Komen foundation.

As Breast Cancer Action points out, a lot of the "pink products" marketing is nothing more than Pinkwashing -- a ploy by product marketers to boost sales of products that actually contribute to breast cancer risk! Many cosmetics and personal care products, for example, are loaded with cancer-causing chemicals that soak right through the skin and enter the bloodstream, and yet these products proudly display pink ribbons, enticing gullible women to purchase them while thinking they're doing something useful to stop breast cancer.

If it wasn't for the fact that so many women are being killed by toxic products, it would all be quite hilarious. But the sad fact is that product marketers are exploiting both the pocketbooks and bodies of women in a quest to generate more profits at any cost... including the cost in human lives.

Fighting to prevent cancer prevention

It is interesting to note that with all the toxic chemicals found in personal care products these days, the American Cancer Society has actually fought laws and initiatives that would have helped prevent cancer. As Samuel Epstein explains on www.PreventCancer.org, "The ACS has a longstanding track record of indifference and even hostility to cancer prevention. This is particularly disturbing in view of the escalating incidence of cancer now striking one in two men and one in three women in their lifetimes. Recent examples include issuing a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute justifying the continued global use of persistent organochlorine pesticides, and also supporting the industry in trivializing dietary pesticide residues as avoidable risks of childhood cancer. ACS policies are further exemplified by allocating under 0.1 percent of its $700 million annual budget to environmental and occupational causes of cancer."

You can read the incredible history of the ACS's opposition to regulation of toxic chemicals here: http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs/reje...

Read more about the ACS here: http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/acs.htm

See our NewsTarget report on the ACS here: http://www.newstarget.com/010244.html

And read our special report, Breast Cancer Deception, here: www.NewsTarget.com/Report_Breast_Cancer_Dece...

Business as usual in the cancer industry

The cancer industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that preys upon the bodies of women, exploiting them for profit and power. And if nothing changes, we'll continue to see the same madness that brought us to this point:

• Cancer non-profits that appear to have no interest in preventing cancer
• The marketing of pink ribbon products that actually cause cancer
• The routine censorship of any information about vitamin D, which cures cancer
• A complete failure of the mainstream media to report the truth about cancer
• Complete failure of conventional doctors and oncologists to recommend safe, natural and low-cost cancer therapies like medicinal mushrooms, microalgae, rainforest herbs and sunlight therapy

Add it all up and you get a future with a whole lot more cancer. Not coincidentally, that's exactly what Big Pharma wants! The more cancer patients there are, the greater their profits. Actually preventing cancer would devastate the industry's profits, costing them billions of dollars in profits they've already banked on! That's why the industry remains so focused on screening and detecting cancer but not preventing it! (Detection makes money, prevention loses money. Get it?)

Difficult to believe? Don't be naive...

I know a lot of people read this and think to themselves, "How could the cancer industry be so evil? How could they exploit the lives of women so callously?" Think Enron. Corporations are, by their very nature, domineering entities capable of great evil, even when the people who work in those corporations might be honest, hard-working individuals. In our current system of free market economics, only the strong, dominant corporations survive. And that requires maximizing revenues and creating new opportunities to sell more drugs to more people, regardless of the real cost in human suffering or environmental destruction.

Many of the cancer non-profits have become little more than front groups for the corporations that make money off of cancer. They act as commercial cheerleading squads, pumping up the crowd to go get screened and hopefully get diagnosed with cancer so they'll end up buying high-profit chemotherapy drugs.

New research, by the way, shows that chemotherapy drugs cause heart damage to women, leading to heart failure. Even mainstream oncologists are starting to think that maybe the industry should stop using these toxic drugs to treat breast cancer. As Dr. Pamela Douglas, a Duke University cardiologist recently said, "In the process of curing their breast cancer, we've exposed them to some pretty nasty things. And it's not just one nasty thing, it's a sequence of nasty things." Those nasty things, it turns out, cause permanent damage to the heart, kidney, liver and brain.

But they're really great for the bottom-line profits of pharmaceutical corporations. And that's the whole reason why screening and chemotherapy continues to be so strongly promoted by cancer non-profit groups, even while highly-effect prevention strategies (vitamin D prevents 77 percent of ALL cancers) are routinely ignored.

I say the cancer industry actually intends to keep the disease going as long as possible, with as many people as possible in order to maximize profits. Anyone who disagrees with me must ask the all-important question: If these cancer non-profits are so interested in preventing cancer, why won't they strongly recommend vitamin D which prevents 77 percent of all cancers? Why?

Why do we need to spend billions of dollars each year on "the search for the cure" when we have a substance right now -- available for free -- that prevents nearly 8 out of 10 cancers in the first place? A 77 percent reduction in all cancers sounds like a pretty important milestone to me. Seems like any organization that was actually interested in the welfare of the people would express some degree of interest in this natural vitamin, wouldn't you think?

Think Before You Pink

Don't be a sucker for cancer marketing schemes. Don't support pink products, and don't be fooled into getting annual mammograms (which actually cause cancer, by the way). Think before you pink! And get more sunlight and vitamin D. That's the single most powerful thing you can do to prevent breast cancer, other than perhaps quitting smoking. But if you don't smoke already, getting sunlight and vitamin D is the single most important thing you can do to prevent cancer, period!

Here's the full press release from Breast Cancer Action (www.BCAction.org)

Breast Cancer Action Launches 6th Year of Think Before You Pink

San Francisco -- Breast Cancer Action (BCA) today launched its annual Think Before You Pink campaign with a new focus -- "pinkwashing" companies that increase sales by putting pink ribbons on their products, even though these products contribute to the breast cancer epidemic.

Since its inception in 2002, BCA's Think Before You Pink campaign has been urging consumers to ask critical questions about the hundreds of pink ribbon products and promotions that are marketed every October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCA calls it Breast Cancer Industry Month). Calling for transparency and accountability from companies that use pink ribbons to sell products, BCA believes that consumers can and should ask questions about how the money is being raised and where the money is going.

The big question of the campaign this year is which companies are engaging in pink ribbon marketing while manufacturing products that are contributing to the epidemic. Toward this end, BCA is singling out the car, dairy, and cosmetics industries.

"These pinkwashing companies are trying to have it both ways," says BCA Executive Director Barbara A. Brenner. "If they care as deeply as they say they do about women's lives, they'll clean up their products."

For example, Ford, Mercedes, and BMW are each raising funds with campaigns that urge consumers to buy and drive cars for breast cancer awareness and research. However, car exhaust contains toxic chemicals that are linked to the disease, and by urging consumers to buy and drive polluting cars in the name of breast cancer, they are also encouraging consumers to unwittingly help increase the incidence of the disease.

"We're not telling anyone not to buy these products or not to drive," says Brenner. "We're asking that consumers think before they buy, contact the companies to demand cleaner products, and remember that they have options. That's why it's called 'Think Before You Pink'."

The Think Before You Pink web site, features an updated "Parade of Pink," a list of some of the hundreds of pink ribbon products and promotions on the market, as well as a list of the six critical questions consumers can ask before buying a pink ribbon-wrapped product.

Breast Cancer Action (www.bcaction.org) is a non-profit education and advocacy organization that does not accept funding from pharmaceutical companies or any other organizations that profit from or contribute to the breast cancer epidemic.